Man's arrest woke him to dangers of meth
By John Tompkins
The Facts
Published March 11, 2007
If you ask Mitchell Rouse when he stopped using crystal methamphetamine, he can quickly tell you.
“It was the day I went to jail,” he said.
It was 3 a.m. on Jan. 26, 2005. Mitchell, 39, and his wife Trena, 28, were fighting. In the middle of the dispute, Trena tried to talk to her husband.
“When I looked into his eyes, it wasn’t Mitch anymore,” she said. “It was meth.”
It was during the fight that Trena called Angleton police and told them her husband had a methamphetamine lab in a shed in the couple’s backyard.
“I didn’t want to do it that way,” she said.
When police gained access to the shed, they found several jars and bottles of chemicals, all used to make methamphetamine, court documents state. Tests later confirmed there was almost a kilogram of substances in the shed that contained traces of meth.
Rouse was arrested on a charges of possession of at least 400 grams of a controlled substance and possession or transport of chemicals to manufacture a controlled substance. If convicted, he was looking at a possible life sentence.
For two weeks, his wife wouldn’t talk to him or visit him at the Brazoria County Detention Center. For eight months, her husband had been using and cooking crystal meth, and it had deteriorated their marriage.
“I felt like half of me had been killed,” she said. “The marriage was done. I had contacted a lawyer. I was ready.”
While in jail, Rouse started to dry out from his months of using the highly addictive drug. He started thinking about his life.
Path to addiction
Rouse was introduced to meth while working as a hospital X-ray technician. Feeling pressure to provide more financial support for his wife and three young children, one of whom has a mild form of autism, Rouse took on more hours at his job and began working second jobs.
To stay awake during his 80-hour work weeks, he started using over-the-counter drugs, Rouse said.
“They worked at first, but over time they lost their potency,” he said.
In early 2003, Rouse said he started using cocaine to stay awake.
“I had never been into more heavy drugs, but I knew people who were,” he said. “It was nothing more than a phone call.”
When his cocaine habit became too expensive, Rouse said he started to consider meth.
“I was scared to at first,” he said. “For me, it was about staying awake. I mean, you were in the moment. I could get things done effectively on meth.”
But like cocaine, meth was not affordable, so Rouse said he started looking into making his own.
“I got on the computer and there were 100 pages on how to cook methamphetamine,” he said.
Unlike most illicit drugs, methamphetamine can be made with household products including iodine, hydrogen peroxide and pseudoephedrine, commonly found in some over-the-counter medicines.
After a few unsuccessful attempts to cook meth, Rouse finally found a method that worked. He took a room in his shed and cut out a space in a piece of audio recording equipment to hide his chemicals.
At night, Rouse would drive throughout the county, trying to buy what he needed to make his meth. He would stop at feed stores to pick up iodine, pharmacies and Wal-Marts for pseudoephedrine.
“You would need 20 packets to make one gram,” Rouse said. “I was making primarily to use. But in the end, it didn’t cost me anything.”
Fellow users starting paying for Rouse’s ingredients for a portion of his product, he said. They also would start buying the chemicals for him as long as he would make it.
He tied a string to the inside of his shed to lock it from the inside. Once he had all of the chemicals he needed, he would pull the door shut and secure it to keep people from coming inside.
Then, Rouse would start cooking.
The new ‘it’ drug
Meth has a lot of names — poor man’s cocaine, bathtub gin, crank. Though not a new drug, it has become more popular in recent years, largely because it is easy to make, said current and former narcotic officers.
“Most of it is found in your house,” said Capt. Randy Rhyne, former narcotics officer for the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office. “It’s not hard to make. It’s not expensive to make.”
One of the central ingredients is pseudoephedrine or ephedrine, found in cold and allergy medications. When meth started to become popular in the late 1990s, meth cooks would buy medications containing pseudoephedrine in bulk.
One of the issues police had to deal with in containing methamphetamine use was the volatility of the labs. The chemicals used to make meth have caused explosions and are so volatile officers must be certified before being allowed to assist in raids on suspected meth labs.
“If you catch them in the middle of a cook, you could cause it to explode,” Rhyne said. “The process of making it is the dangerous part, aside from the usage.”
In 2003, the sheriff’s office confiscated about 13 grams of methamphetamine. The following year, they confiscated 194 liquid ounces, which translates roughly to just more than 5,000 grams. In 2005, the amount taken dropped to about 90 grams.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse stated in a recent report that meth was responsible for 21,000 treatment admissions in 1992. By 2004, 150,000 treatment admissions were attributed to meth.
The drug has become so popular in the past few years that it has overtaken other widely abused narcotics, said James “Chip” Gayle, former narcotics officer with the Brazoria County Sheriff’s office.
“It’s more prevalent than cocaine,” he said
One gram of meth can be used to make 10 lines, Gayle said as he poured out a packet of Sweet’N Low to demonstrate.
Two or three of those lines is about one dose, though how much constitutes a dose will range from user to user, Gayle said. How much it takes to reach a high also will increase after more use, he said.
“You build up a tolerance to it,” he said.
Dealing with addiction
“It was a serious culture shock being in jail,” Rouse said.
While his case worked its way through the judicial system, Rouse was out on bond, thinking about his life and his addiction. Hearing the metal doors close in the jail was influence enough to stop using, he said.
When he was released on bond in February 2005, Mitchell and Trena Rouse started to fix their marriage. Mitchell was not allowed to stay at his own home at first, Trena said.
“He really expressed that he wanted to change,” she said. “I agreed to not throw it all away.”
After getting out, Trena also urged her husband to start attending church. Before he got out of jail, Mitchell said he was a stringent believer in the skepticism of philosopher David Hume.
But when he went to church with his family, Mitchell said he felt the touch of God. Religion started to give him faith that he could overcome his problems.
“My wife dragged me to church,” he said. “I think the good Lord washed me of that disease. I realized that family meant a lot more than making money.”
Brazoria County District Attorney Jeri Yenne decided to give Rouse a second chance. When he stayed clean for six months while his case was reset, she opted to give him eight years probation for the charges.
“We do not willy-nilly toss people aside,” she said. “It is a rare exception to accept probation with that amount of drugs.”
Labs fading; problem growing
To combat the problem of meth use and labs, laws were passed in June 2005 making access to pseudoephedrine and ephedrine more difficult.
“State laws introduced in jurisdictions such as Oklahoma and Texas have reduced the availability of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine to many domestic meth laboratory operators,” said Ray D’Alessio, an agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency in Houston.
In addition to products containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine being put behind the counter, those wishing to purchase products with the two chemicals now must produce a driver’s license and are limited in the quantities they can buy.
Narcotics officers say laws restricting access to vital ingredients have helped, but illegal drug producers have taken notice of the market for meth and now are producing it in mass quantities in Mexico.
“Much of the meth found in Texas and other areas of the West and Midwest is produced in large-scale laboratories operated in Mexico and some areas of the U.S.,” D’Alessio said. “The meth produced in these labs is a more potent and higher quality product, produced in larger quantities.”
Though meth labs no longer present as much danger, the drug itself is now more dangerous than ever, Gayle said.
“I think it’s much worse because people now have access that they didn’t have before,” Gayle said. “You used to have to know someone that made it. Now you have to know someone who has it.”
Life after meth
Mitchell Rouse marked two years without using methamphetamine in January. More time has passed than the amount of time he spent using it, he said.
“It seems odd to me,” he said.
It took Rouse six months to find a job once he got out of jail in February 2005. He now installs granite countertops for a living and says whenever stress starts to mount in his life, he doesn’t even think about using.
“I pray a lot,” he said. “I find my solace with God. This is the happiest I’ve ever been with my life.”
His marriage with Trena now has been strengthened, and the two are working better to take care of their three children, ages 7, 6 and 4.
“I made a vow for better or worse, and that was worse,” Trena said. “I think it was the best thing that ever happened to us. It’s like the lights have been turned on.”
Yenne said she felt Rouse’s turnaround undoubtedly was divine intervention.
“Meth is a monster,” she said. “I’ve never known anyone addicted to meth that survived. It had to be God.”
Rouse, who studied literature and philosophy in college, is writing a book about his experiences.
As for his shed in the back yard, Rouse still goes out there, though he doesn’t spend nearly the amount of time he once did. His audio equipment still is sitting out there, but now pieces of wood and molding rest on top of it.
“I spent the greater part of a year out here,” he said. “I don’t need to be out here anymore.”
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METH MATH
Facts about crystal methamphetamine.
All numbers are approximations according to narcotics officers.
28g - equals 1 liquid ounce
$3,500 - profit on 2 to 3 ounces of meth for the person who cooks it
21,000 - Treatment admissions attributed to meth in 1992, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse
150,000 - Meth-related admissions in 2004
10.4 million - Number of people 12 and older who have tried meth, according to the 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health
GET HELP
If you or someone you know is battling addiction, you can call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for a referral at (800) 662-HELP, or visit www.findtreatment.samhsa.gov.
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